Such a remote control is known from DE 196 53 840 A1. There, a manual transmitter for a remotely operated central locking system in motor vehicles is shown, having a housing, a transmitting means, an electronic control circuit for controlling the transmitting means, and a solar cell, which supplies electric energy to the control circuit.
GB 2 396 046 A shows an alarm key trailer with a housing of transparent plastic, inside which is arranged an incandescent bulb, which begins to shine in event of an alarm. Moreover, two pushbutton switches are arranged on the housing for activating and deactivating the alarm.
US 2003/0206128 A1 shows a universal remote control with a transparent acrylic housing, inside which there is again placed an incandescent bulb. Using a locator, the incandescent bulb can be made to light up and an acoustic transmitter can be activated.
DE 20 2005 015 165 U1 shows a remotely controlled locking device for a vehicle, in which a keypad and a touch screen display are formed.
Remote controls for the control of electronic devices, such as television sets, radios, video recorders, satellite receivers, DVD players, but also other household appliances such as lighting systems, roll-down shutters, garage doors and the like, are widespread today. They usually have a housing with a battery compartment, a conductor track board with electronic components, a keypad as well as a transmitting unit, such as an infrared transmitting diode. One of the keys is customarily used for turning the remote control on and off. The other keys are assigned one or more functions, such that when the key is pressed an encoded infrared signal is sent out to the device being controlled.
Instead of a keypad with individual mechanically actuated keys, it has also already been proposed to use a touch-sensitive key pad, which is generally known today as a touch pad (see DE 199 08 406 A1, DE 100 13 444 A1) or also a so-called touch screen, i.e., a display device which is at the same time sensitive to touch (see U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,237,327, 5,353,016).
Touch pads and touch screens are generally known and are specified, for example, by WO 92/04724 or DE 20 2007 001 624 U1. They work by various principles, including capacitive, resistive, optical, or with sound waves (surface acoustic waves). These devices, subsumed under “touch-sensitive key pads”, generate an electrical signal which is generally coordinated unambiguously with one or more places on its surface that are touched by an object or by a finger.
It is thus possible to replace the functions of a keyboard with individual keys by such a touch-sensitive key pad by assigning certain functions to definite regions of the key pad.
In the above-cited WO 92/04724, DE 199 08 406 A1, DE 100 13 444 A1 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,016, the key pad is transparent and consists, for example, of a transparent plate.
Likewise, all these known remote controls have yet another housing, in which electronic circuits, a power supply, usually in the form of a battery, a transmitting diode, and possibly yet other components are accommodated. The housings are usually injected molded from plastic at present.
The production of the housing is material-, tooling-, and assembly-intensive and requires a high energy expenditure for the plastic molding. Since, in practice, remote controls often have only a limited lifetime, the disposal is also problematical and expensive, especially on account of the high plastic percentage of the housing and the key pads. Furthermore, for very many remote controls, the operation is very complicated on account of an enormous number of keys and many people do not master it.